Table of Contents

List of Maps vi

1 THE BEST OF SOUTHEAST ASIA 1

2 INTRODUCING SOUTHEAST ASIA 13

3 THAILAND 27

4 LAOS 177

5 VIETNAM 232

6 CAMBODIA 358

7 SINGAPORE 410

8 MALAYSIA 508

9 BALI (INDONESIA) 576

10 PLANNING YOUR TRIP TO SOUTHEAST ASIA 624

Index 647

About the Author

Ron Emmons taught English in Africa and the Americas before moving to Thailand, where he now works as a freelance writer/photographer. He is the author and photographer of Portrait of Thailand and Walks Along the Thames Path (New Holland, UK), as well as writer of Spiral Guide to the Dominican Republic (Automobile Association, UK). Ron has also made major contributions to several other guide books, such as Top Ten Bangkok (Dorling Kindersley, UK), the Rough Guide to Vietnam and National Geographic Traveler Vietnam.

Jennifer Eveland spent part of her childhood in Singapore, has studied in Hong Kong, lived for a spell in Bangkok, and has traveled extensively throughout East and Southeast Asia. In addition to Frommer's Singapore & Malaysia, she has authored previous editions of Frommer's Thailand. In 1999 she returned to Singapore, where she has been based as a full-time freelance writer. She writes regularly for The International Herald Tribune and contributes travel, finance, and lifestyle stories to numerous local and international magazines, newspapers, and books.

Jen Lin-Liu is the author of Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (Houghton Mifflin) and the founder of the Beijing cooking school Black Sesame Kitchen. She was raised in southern California, graduated from Columbia University, and has lived in China since 2000, when she was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study in Beijing. She has also written for Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Travel + Leisure, Saveur, and Food & Wine.

Daniel White is a British writer who has been published in major magazines and newspapers in Europe and Asia. He has written for publications such as the UK's Guardian, Observer, Maxim, and Marie Claire. He has also worked on guidebooks and political commentaries as both a writer and editor, and was editor-in-chief of the now defunct Absolute Phuket magazine in Thailand. He has traveled the corners of Southeast Asia by motorcycle and is currently working on a website project chronicling his trips on two wheels. Previously based in London and Paris, he has been based in Bangkok since 2002.